The late pop artist was back in the news recently when it was reported that a 1984 portrait Warhol did of Michael Jackson might fetch millions in an upcoming auction. The painting, showing a "Thriller"-era Jackson, is being sold by the Vered Gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., which expected to get about $300,000 for the piece before the singer-dancer died on June 25.

Bidding has been extended on the painting due to demand and is already up to $800,000, the gallery reported last week.

The musical "Pop!" will be staged by Mark Brokaw, whose recent Broadway credits include the musical "Cry-Baby." Next season on Broadway, Brokaw is staging the new Patrick Marber play, "After Miss Julie," featuring the Broadway debut of actress Sienna Miller (who, coincidentally, played Warhol's muse Edie Sedgwick in the 2006 film "Factory Girl").

"Pop!" delves into the many enigmas surrounding Warhol, who was famously coy about revealing himself. The musical starts from a fictionalized version of the artist's near death in 1968, when he was shot by the radical feminist Valerie

Solanas.

In the show, the Warhol discovery,

drag queen Candy Darling, "hosts a happening whodunit musical in which the famous -- and infamous -- denizens of Warhol's legendary Factory all have motives to pull the trigger. But the pop art icon unravels

an even bigger mystery as he confronts

not only the prime suspects, but also his

art and his own greatest creation: himself."

"Pop!" completes a Yale Rep season that will include Henrik Ibsen's "The Master Builder" (Sept. 18 to Oct. 10) and Eclipsed," by Danai Gurira (Oct. 23 to Nov. 14).

The season also will include the classic Italian comedy of mistaken identity -- "The Servant of Two Masters," by Carlo Goldoni -- from March 12 to April 3.

The 2009-10 slate ends with "Battle of Black and Dogs," by Bernard-Marie Koltes, from April 16 to May 8. The Koltes' play will be directed by Robert Woodruff, whose staging of last season's "Notes from Underground" scored a huge hit for Yale Rep.

"FULL MONTY" IN BRIDGEPORT: Matt Schicker, artistic director of the Playhouse on the Green, proved last season that there is an audience for offbeat fare at the beautiful 228-seat theater in a former bank building in downtown Bridgeport.

Schicker's staging of "The Rocky Horror Show" was such a hit that it will return Oct. 23 to Nov. 14 as part of the next season, along with two other slightly racy offerings, the Peter Shaffer play "Equus," and the Broadway musical, "The Full Monty."

"Over the past season, I spent a lot of time talking to and listening carefully to our audiences. What I heard was that they love musicals, and that they really want to see great shows that are not your standard community theater fare. This is entirely in line with our mission to provide a unique experience to everyone involved on both sides of the footlights, so this season, certainly, we are so excited to present these incredible shows at an affordable cost," Schicker said.

The fourth show of the season will be a rock musical, the title of which will be announced in November.

Two family productions also are being developed and will be announced next month.